Monday, April 13, 2009

Nate McMillan should be Coach of the Year, but isn't even being mentioned

Oh the joys of toiling away for a small market team in the Pacific Northwest. I have yet to hear Nate McMillan be mentioned as even a potential candidate for Coach of the Year honors from a member of the national media. If you think this is nothing more than homerism, think about how simple the case for McMillan really is: No young NBA team has played this well. Ever.

Portland is considered the second-youngest team in the league based on their entire roster. But if you exclude Raef LaFrentz, who has been "rehabbing" in Iowa all season and is by no means a part of this team beyond his paycheck, the Blazers are the youngest of all.

So the youngest rotation in the League is currently battling for home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Also consider this nugget from Mike Barrett: this is the first team in League history to win fifty games with four rookies in the rotation. Not convincing enough? This graph shows that Portland is the best young team to play in the years 1951-Present. (1951 being the first available year for the needed statistics.)

More simply, what the Blazers have done this season has never been done before. In my mind that is more impressive than winning a ton of games with a little help from various veteran stars and super-stars. Am I mistaken, or does that sort of thing happen every single freaking year?

Being that Nate's historic performance this season is not even getting him into the conversation, I would like to submit this as exhibit #870324580345;;ewru9 of how ridiculously overlooked the Blazers remain at a national level. Boo.

4 comments:

Steven said...

It is so frustrating when this happens. Nate deserves it, hands down!
Another travesty I hope we avoid is Brandon and the All-NBA Teams selections. He SHOULD make the 2nd team, more than likely he'll be on the 3rd team - but he better be on one of them!

Jack Brown said...

No doubt. More and more of the national media are coming out with their picks for awards, and still nothing. Stein over at ESPN even listed about 5 "top" candidates without a nod to Nate.

I'm hoping that Brandon winning the Western Conference Player of the Week will be enough to remind the voters he exists at just the right time. We'll see.

Anonymous said...

Hello. My wife and I bought our house about 6 months ago. It was a foreclosure and we were able to get a great deal on it. We also took advantage of the 8K tax credit so that definitely helped. We did an extensive remodeling job and now I want to refinance to cut the term to a 20 or 15 year loan. Does anyone know any good sites for mortgage information? Thanks!

Mike

Unknown said...

my link visit their website this link More about the author see this here good quality replica bags

Blog Archive